The Night Gardener

'They took my friend's phone and he didn't get it back for two weeks.'

'Your mother and I would've stepped in and got it back. The point is, you can't fight them. They're bosses. You're going to grow up and get out in the world and you're going to have some bosses you don't like, and still, you've got to do what they say.'

'Not when I'm playin in the NFL.'

'I'm talking to you serious here, Diego. I mean, I have to make compromises to bosses I don't like, and I'm forty-two years old. It's not just part of being a kid, it's part of being an adult as well.'

Diego's lips tightened. He was shutting down. Ramone had given him this speech before. It no longer sounded fresh to Ramone, either.

'Just try to get along,' said Ramone.

'I will.'

Ramone felt like they were done. He put his hand out, and Diego lightly slapped his fingers against Ramone's.

'There's somethin else,' said Diego.

'I'm listening.'

'There was a fight the other day after school. You know my friend Toby?'

'From football?'

'Yeah.'

Ramone remembered Toby from the team. He was a tough kid but not a bad one. He lived with his father, a cab-driver, in the apartments near the school. His mother, Ramone had heard, was a drug addict who was no longer in his life.

'Toby got into it with this boy,' said Diego. 'He'd been talkin mess to Toby in the halls and he challenged Toby to a fight. They met down by the creek. Toby said, Bap!' Diego slammed his right fist into his left palm. 'He stole him with a jab and a right punch. One-two, and the other boy went down.'

'Were you there?' said Ramone, perhaps with too much excitement in his voice.

'Yeah. I was walkin home that day with a couple of friends and came up on it. You know I was gonna watch…'

'So?'

'The other boy's parents called the school. Now they're havin what they call an investigation. Finding out who was there and who saw what. The parents want to press charges on Toby. They're talking about assault.'

'I thought this kid challenged Toby to the fight.'

'He did, but now he sayin he was only kidding around. He sayin he never did want to fight.'

'Why is the school involved? It was off their property, wasn't it?'

'They were both walking home from school, still carrying their books and stuff. So it makes it the school's business.'

'Okay.'

'They're gonna want me to tell how Toby hit this boy first.'

'Somebody had to throw the first punch,' said Ramone, speaking as a man and not a father. 'Was it a fair fight?'

'The other boy was bigger than Toby. One of those skateboarder kids. And he was the one made the challenge. He just couldn't back up his words.'

'And it was just the two of them. Nobody ganged up on this other boy, right?'

'It was just them.'

'I don't see a problem.'

'What I'm sayin is, I'm not about to snitch out my friend.'

Ramone didn't want him to. But it wouldn't be right for him to come out and say so, because he had to play a role. So he said nothing.

'We straight?' said Diego.

'Get ready for dinner,' said Ramone with a small, strategic nod.

As Diego put on a clean T-shirt, Ramone took in his room. Pictures of rappers cut out from the Source and Vibe, and a nice photo of a dropped, restored '63 Impala, tacked to a corkboard; a poster from Mack Lewis's gym in Baltimore, a collage of local fighters along with Tyson and Ali, with the saying 'Good fighters come to the threshold of pain and cross it fully to achieve greatness' printed on the lower border. On the floor, homemade CDs burned on the house computer, a CD tower, a portable stereo, copies of Don Diva and a gun magazine, jeans and T-shirts, both dirty and clean, Authentic jerseys from various teams, a pair of Timbs, and two pairs of Nikes. On his desk, rarely used for studying, an unread copy of White Fang; an unread copy of True Grit, which Ramone thought his son would like but that he had never cracked; sneaker cleaning solution; photos of girls, black and Hispanic, in tight jeans and tank tops, taken at the mall and presented to Diego as gifts; a pair of dice; a butane lighter with a marijuana leaf inlaid on its face; and his loose-leaf notebook, with the name Dago written, graffiti-style, on its cover. A cap decorated with his nickname and the numbers '09,' his alleged graduation year from high school, hung on a nail he had driven into the wall.

Even with the variation in styles, the advances in technology, and the changes in culture, Diego's room looked much like Ramone's room had looked in 1977. In fact, Diego was very much like his father, in so many ways.

'What're we having?' said Diego.

'Your mother's making a sauce.'

'Her sauce or Grandmom's?'

'Go on, boy,' said Ramone. 'Get washed up.'

CHAPTER 10

Holiday wasn't drunk. It was more like he was tired. He had sweated out most of the alcohol with Rita on top of the sheets. His vision was good, driving down the toll road and then the inner loop of the Beltway from Virginia into Maryland. He felt a little foggy, but he was fine.

He listened to the classic rock station on the satellite radio as he drove. He was not much of a music guy, but he knew his '70s rock. His older brother, whom he'd once idolized, had played his records in the house when they were growing up, and this was the only period of music Holiday still paid attention to or knew. A live track from Humble Pie, Steve Marriott shouting, 'Awl royt!' in a slurred cockney accent before the band broke into a heavy blues-rock riff, was playing now.

Holiday didn't see his brother anymore, except when Christmas came around, and that was just so he could visit his nephews, let them know their uncle Doc was still in the world. But the nephews were getting up to college age now, and Holiday suspected the once-a-year visits would be soon coming to an end. His brother was in mortgage banking, lived out in Germantown, drove a Nissan Pathfinder whose only path was the 270 corridor, and had a wife that Holiday wouldn't fuck with the lights out. His brother was far away from the long-haired, cool teenager he had once been, spinning Skynyrd, Thin Lizzy, and Clapton in their parents' basement between bong hits blown out the cracked casement windows. His brother now checked his stocks on the hour and studied Consumer Reports before every purchase. Holiday wanted to scream in his face, but it wouldn't have brought his brother back to life.

With his sister long gone and both his parents dead, Holiday was alone. The one thing he had had to get up for, the one thing that had made his eyes snap open in the morning and driven him from the bed, had been taken away. He had been a cop, and then he wasn't. Now he wore a stupid hat, made conversation with people who did not interest him at all, and jock-eyed luggage in and out of the trunk of a car.

All because of a fellow cop who wouldn't cut him any slack. A rule follower, like Holiday's brother. Another guy with a stick up his ass.

He didn't feel like going back to his place just yet. He exited the Beltway at Georgia Avenue and took it south into D.C. He still had time to catch one, maybe two, at Leo's before they brought up the lights.

The Ramone family ate dinner at a table with ladder-back chairs situated in the open area between the kitchen and the rec room. They tried to eat dinner together every night, though this meant many late meals, due to Ramone's erratic schedule. Both Regina and Ramone had come from families who had done so, and they felt it was important. The Italian in Ramone believed that sharing good food was a spiritual thing that transcended ritual.

'Good sauce, Mom,' said Diego.

'Thank you.'

'Tastes a little burnt, though,' said Diego, his eyes lighting on Ramone's.

'Your mom put a flame thrower to the garlic and onions,' said Ramone.

'Stop it,' said Regina.

'We're playin, honey,' said Ramone. 'It's real good.'

Alana had her face down near her bowl, trying to suck up a forkful of spaghetti. She was an intense eater who thought and talked about food often. Ramone liked to see a grown woman enjoy a meal, and he loved it in his little girl.

'Want me to cut that up for you, Junior?' said Diego.

'Uh-uh,' said Alana.

'Make it easier to eat.'

'Nope.'

'You eatin it like a pig do,' said Diego.

'Does,' said Regina.

'Leave her alone,' said Ramone.

'I'm just tryin to help.'

'Worry about yourself,' said Ramone. 'With those sauce stains on your shirt.'

'Dag,' said Diego, noticing the splatter marks on his wife-beater.

The talk turned to Diego's homework and his repeated claim that he'd done it at study hall. Then the Laveranues Coles trade and Ramone's assertion that Santana Moss was a sideline receiver only, as he tended to drop passes in the middle of the field when he heard footsteps. Diego, who had a jersey with Moss's name on the back of it, circa the Jets, disagreed.

'Who's Ashley?' said Regina to Diego, apropos of nothing.

'Just a girl at school,' said Diego.

'I saw her name on the caller ID,' said Regina.

'That a crime?' said Diego.

'Course not,' said Regina. 'Is she nice?'

'What's she look like?' said Ramone, and Diego chuckled.

'Mom, she's a girl I know at school. I don't have no one special, okay?'

'Anyone,' said Regina.

'But you are saying,' said Ramone, 'you're saying you do like girls.'

'Go ahead, Dad.'

'I was beginning to wonder.'

'It's private,' said Diego.

"Cause you never talk about girls.'

'Dad.'

'It's okay to be like that,' said Ramone.

'Dad, I'm not gay.'

'I'd still love you if you were. Like that, I mean.'

'Gus,' said Regina.

They talked about the Nationals. Diego said baseball was a 'white sport,' and Ramone told him to look at all the black and Hispanic players in the major leagues. But Diego could not be moved. He told Ramone to check out the faces in the stands at RFK. Ramone agreed that most of them were white but finished by saying that he didn't see Diego's point.

'Dad closed a case today,' said Regina.

'What's a case?' said Alana.

'He locked up a bad guy,' said Diego.

'This guy wasn't all bad,' said Ramone. 'He did something bad. He made a bad mistake.'

After dinner, Regina read to Alana, and Alana, who was coming along in sounding out her words, read back to her. Ramone and Diego watched one of the last regular-season Nationals games on TV. At the end of the seventh, Diego gave his father a pound and went to his room. Alana kissed Ramone and went to her room with Regina, who read to her some more and put her to bed. Ramone cracked a bottle of Beck's and watched the rest of the game.

Regina was washing her face in the master bathroom when Ramone came up and undressed for bed. He noticed her outfit, one of Diego's football team T-shirts and worn pajama bottoms, and read the message: no sex tonight. But he was a man, as dim and hopeful as any other. He wasn't going to let some dowdy old outfit stop him completely. He'd give it a try.

He closed their door and slid between the sheets. She joined him and gave him a chaste kiss on the side of his mouth. He got up on his elbow and tried another kiss, just to feel her out.

'Good night,' she said.

'So soon?'

'I'm tired.'

'I'll make you tired.'

Ramone put his hand inside her pajama bottoms and stroked the inside of her thigh.

'Alana's gonna be in here any minute,' said Regina. 'She wasn't even asleep when I left her room.'

Ramone kissed her. Her lips opened and she moved a little closer to him in the bed.

'She's gonna walk in on us,' said Regina.

'We'll be quiet.'

'You know that ain't true.'

'C'mon, girl.'

'How about I just yank you off?'

'I can do that myself.'

Regina and Ramone chuckled softly, and she kissed him more deeply. He began to pull her bottoms off, her back arched to let him, when they heard a knock on their bedroom door.

'Damn,' said Ramone.

'That's your daughter,' said Regina.

'That's not my daughter,' said Ramone. 'That's a seven-year-old chastity belt.'

Five minutes later, Alana was snoring between them in their bed, her small brown fingers splayed on Ramone's chest. It was true that he was a little disappointed. But he was happy, too.